


can't sleep outside your arms (hold me)

by imaginejolls



Category: Motherland: Fort Salem (TV)
Genre: Explicit Consent, F/F, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Sharing a Bed, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:40:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23599237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginejolls/pseuds/imaginejolls
Summary: “You’d think that after training all day, we’d sleep like babies."“Yeah, you would.”“So why aren’t we?”Tally and Abigail beat sleeplessness the only way they know how: together.
Relationships: Abigail Bellweather/Tally Craven
Comments: 21
Kudos: 139





	can't sleep outside your arms (hold me)

The moonlight paints the floor in thick stripes of faint light. Abigail’s body, distorted by the blanket, is caught under the bars. Tally lies on her side, looking at her. Sleep is eluding her tonight, for some reason. She heaves a quiet sigh. The dust motes fall silently through the lines of moonlight and Tally watches them and tries not to think about her mother, not to think about anything at all. She fails. With another sigh, she turns to her back and stares intently at the ceiling. 

“I can hear you thinking all the way down here,” says Abigail in a sleep-thick voice. Tally can’t stop the alarmed sound she makes.

“Sorry!” she squeaks somewhat quietly. “I didn’t mean to-” 

“Come here.” 

Tally scrunches her eyebrows together and turns back to look at Abigail who, in turn, is looking up over her shoulder in the vague direction of Tally. “Here where?”

Abigail groans and turns to her back. She pats the bed beside herself twice. 

“Okay,” Tally says, already on her way down the bunk ladder. She crosses the distance between the bunk bed and Abigail’s own bed swiftly, then falters right in front of it. Her face is that of an uncertain puppy. 

“Come on, we don’t have all night,” Abigail says, rolling her eyes. She holds up a corner of her blanket and Tally climbs in next to her.

There’s a moment of awkward silence where they just lie next to one another, each on her back. Tally lets out a long breath. The moonlight now sprawls across both of their bodies, Abigail’s and her own, and Tally swears she can almost feel its touch. 

“You’d think that after training all day, we’d sleep like babies,” she says then and turns to her side. She sees a smile creep onto Abigail’s lips. 

“Yeah, you would.”

“So why aren’t we?” Tally asks, and something creeps into her voice that she hates hearing in it. Insecurity, vulnerability, weakness. She’s a soldier, damn it, why can’t she act like it? 

“Sometimes you just can’t stop the racing in your mind,” Abigail says, quietly, like it’s a secret. She’s facing Tally now. Her face is… bare, for a lack of a better word. Tally has never seen her like this, so unguarded. She reachers out and cups Abigail’s cheek in her palm. There’s a split second during which Tally thinks she’s crossed a line, but then Abigail closes her eyes like a cat and exhales. She doesn’t move away. They lie together in silence, the moonlight washing over them. If Tally closes her eyes, she can imagine the whoosing of the waves back home. It was so much easier to fall asleep then. 

Something drops down her thumb and startles Tally out of her doze. When her eyes focus, she realizes Abigail is crying. She wants to say something, but Abigail just shakes her head, hair scratching across the pillowcase. Tally pulls her in closer. She falls asleep to faint sniffles instead of the sound of the waves, holding Abigail in a loose embrace. When she wakes up in the morning, Abigail is gone. 

They don’t talk about it. Tally offers Abigail a smile and Abigail mirrors it with one of her own, and that is enough. 

More than a week passes. There’s no moonlight this time because the moon is hiding shyly behind a thick curtain of clouds. Tally peers into the darkness.

“Abigail. Are you awake?” 

“What’s wrong, Tally?” 

“Can I sleep in your bed again?” 

A pause. Tally’s heart beats against her ribcage like a captive bird dying to escape.

“Sure, come on.” 

Relief floods Tally’s veins. She crawls into Abigail’s bed and wraps herself around Abigail’s back and suddenly, it’s so much easier to breathe. Well, figuratively, because there’s hair in Tally’s face. But the weight that’s been sitting on her chest all day is gone and now it’s so much easier to be lulled to sleep by the sound of Abigail’s breathing. 

It becomes a habit. Not every night, but often enough, the two of them end up in Abigail’s bed by the window, blanketed by the softness of moonlight or the silent absence of it on moonless nights. Raelle slips out of the room first and from then on it is a waiting game. What will it be tonight? Will sleep take over before they get the chance to utter the words? Or will they lie in darkness and silence, waiting for the right moment to speak? Tonight it is Abigail who starts, she says:

“Tally, I can’t fall asleep.” 

And Tally is even glad to hear it. The next instant she’s lying down in Abigail’s bed, huddling close. They face each other, smiling small private smiles. Abigail pushes a strand of Tally’s hair behind her ear with a swipe of her finger and then keeps tracing patterns across her jaw. It makes goosebumps rise down Tally’s left arm. 

“Tell me something,” Abigail says and her eyes are like two pools of cosmic matter as she looks at Tally. 

So Tally tells her about the compound where she grew up, that the birds sing different songs than the birds do here, she tells Abigail about the ocean and how she fell asleep to the soft sound of distant waves, and suddenly, Abigail is looking at her with something else hiding in the moonlit features of her face, something Tally can’t recognize.

“Tally,” Abigail but whispers, “I’m going to kiss you.”

And all Tally can say to that is: “Alright.”

It’s a good kiss. Abigail inches closer, her lips are soft and she is gentle. She holds Tally close with warm hands and doesn’t let go even when the kiss has passed. Tally doesn’t have much experience in the kissing department besides Clare, a girl from back home, but still. It was a good kiss. She leans in and chases Abigail’s mouth with her own. 

Tally is pliant. She lets herself be guided wherever Abigail pleases and it feels good. Really good. Tally traces the shape of Abigail’s body with curious hands when it occurs to her that she could touch Abigail under the pyjamas she’s wearing. It seems like a scandalous thought. Yet she can’t help but slip her hands underneath Abigail’s tanktop and- 

“Oh,” Abigail blurts out and laughs, “okay.” 

She pushes the blanket away and sits on her heels to take off the tanktop. Tally’s mouth falls open. Abigail laughs and makes a _come on_ gesture with both hands. 

“Fair is fair,” she says pointedly. An easy grin sits on her mouth still, and Tally thinks: might as well. She likes Abigail, a lot; she trusts her. So why not?

Tally wriggles out of her tanktop and flings it at Abigail. They laugh as quietly as possible. They kiss again. Somehow, kissing Abigail feels like the easiest thing that Tally’s done since coming to Fort Salem. She doesn’t want to stop doing it. 

Tally feels the heat creeping up her thighs and she panics a little. Her hands on Abigail’s body falter. Abigail pauses to look at her. 

“You alright?” 

Tally nods resolutely. “Yes. Are we going to have sex?” 

“We’re not if you don’t want to,” Abigail tells her with a serious face. God, is this an awkward moment to find that hot? 

“I do,” Tally says, surprising herself. 

“Well then, I guess we are going to have sex. Any time you want us to stop, say so, and we stop. No expectations. Okay?” 

“Yes ma’am,” Tally says with a badly hidden smile. 

Abigail rolls her eyes and ducks down to kiss Tally again, and Tally won’t complain. Their naked torsos press flush and there’s a thigh between her legs now and oh, this feels _good_. Tally moves her hips against the hard muscle of Abigail’s leg, and Abigail mutters nonsense encouragements into Tally’s cheek, down her neck, into her shoulder… She finds a sensitive spot behind Tally’s ear and when she does, Tally’s clit pulses with arousal. This won’t do. 

“Wait,” Tally pants out, “I need your-” She shimmies out of her shorts and lies on Abigail’s bed unabashed, legs open wide. “I need you,” she says, looking at Abigail like she is Tally’s saviour. Abigail sits with her chest heaving, and she’s so fucking beautiful in the moonlight, it’s unreal. She stares at Tally’s body with such intensity Tally can feel the touch of her gaze. 

Tally hears a Seed she doesn’t recognize. She watches Abigail’s fingers gleam in the night. Oh. When Abigail touches her for the first time, her fingers are wet but not cold. 

Abigail is good at this. Tally had no doubts about it; Abigail has clearly had more experience than Tally herself. It’s not like Tally never touches herself but this… this is so much better. Abigail is intent and attentive, watching out for every twitch of Tally’s muscles, every hitch in her breathing. Tally pulls Abigail down by her neck. She kisses her and kisses her and doesn’t stop kissing her until she’s shaking. 

“Inside,” Tally says weakly, “please.” 

And Abigail kisses her temple and says: “I’ve got you, don’t worry.” 

The pad of her thumb stays on Tally’s clit while two of her calloused fingers slide easily inside of her. Abigail pumps in and out a few times before she presses into Tally’s inner wall, and then Tally is trying her best to stay quiet as she comes and comes and comes. 

She finally opens her eyes to Abigail smiling down at her. She looks real proud of herself. And well, she’s got every reason to be. Still, Tally sticks her tongue at her. 

“Your turn,” Tally announces, and Abigail’s eyes widen. “What, you thought I wouldn’t want to repay the favour? Fair’s fair,” she repeats Abigail’s words to her. 

Abigail chuckles. “I guess.” She pulls her pyjama bottoms down her legs and straddles Tally’s hips. Tally feels the air freeze inside her lungs. Abigail is a sight to behold. 

Tally takes a moment to just touch Abigail’s body. To run her palms across Abigail’s thighs, her hips, curl her hands around her breasts. Abigail makes a sound then. She takes Tally’s hands into her own and guides her touches. Tally feels like she’s discovering a secret passage behind a bookshelf.

Fucking Abigail feels so much different than fucking herself. It’s better, for a thousand reasons that Tally can’t name right now. Abigail’s cunt clings to her fingers as they slide in and out of her, her breasts move with the thrusts of her hips, and the entirety of her is bathed in moonlight. It drips down her body like something tangible. Tally watches where her fingers disappear into her. The sight gives her a twinge of arousal.

Tally can’t tell if Abigail came. She doesn’t ask. Abigail simply curls a hand around her wrist and gently pries Tally’s fingers out of her pulsing cunt and smiles a tired smile. Tally doesn’t quite know what to do about the wetness coating her fingers. Abigail gives her a tissue and a grin. 

“Here,” she says and she even sounds tired now, “we should sleep.” 

“Yeah. Come here.”

Tally holds her close, both of them still naked, and it feels different from before. Not worse, though. Just different. But sleep finds them nevertheless and soon enough Tally is drifting away into the sweet embrace of unconsciousness. 

Raelle bursts into the room a second before the third bell. Tally sits up in Abigail’s bed, blinking rapidly and panicking. Oh no. She holds the sheets close to her naked chest.

“What’s wrong, why are you looking at me like that? Did you guys fuck or something?” Raelle asks, blunt as always. “Oh my god, you totally did. I can see your mark sparkling all the way from here!” 

And then Raelle stops being able to form coherent sentences because she’s laughing too hard. Well, at least someone is having a good morning. Abigail is glaring daggers as she gets up to get dressed. 

“Y’know, I thought it would take you guys a bit longer.” 

“Don’t push it, Raelle,” Abigail warns. It’s a bit hard to take her seriously, though, because she’s wearing one sock and a shirt. 

“Oh, dammit!” 

“What’s wrong?” Tally asks with concern.

“Now I owe Glory 10 dollars.”

Abigail stands with her mouth wide open. “You didn’t!” 

Raelle winks. “You better get dressed, Tally. And try to cover up the giant hickey on your neck.”

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't been able to finish a fic in a while, and today i was fucking around with ideas and suddenly it happened. you're welcome. kudos and comments much appreciated
> 
> i exist on the tumblrs and tweeters as @imaginejolls as well, in case you want to connect elsewhere.


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